How Discovering Emotionally Immature Parents Helps Me Connect to Love

When I accept painful realities, I open the door to healing.

Up until two years ago, I didn’t realize how intensely my childhood influenced my adult life. The quality of our relationships with our parents is crucial. I learned how to cope in dysfunctional environments. That mostly meant prioritizing other peoples’ feelings and needs, while suppressing my own.

Discovering emotionally immature parents can feel horrifying and freeing. Though I’ve engaged with many resources and practices for inner work, this one book has been a difficult and valuable read.

Reading Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by psychologist Lindsay C. Gibson, gave me a powerful new perspective. Rather than blindly “honoring my parents,” as the Bible says, I can identify emotional immaturity, bring compassion to its impact, and improve my emotional wellness.

Decades of emotional neglect take a costly toll. Immature parents primed me for loneliness, deep insecurities, and a lack of self-trust.

As I see the bizarre, unhelpful truths I absorbed during childhood, I can release them. I get to reconnect with my intuition and courage. I’ve become a stronger, more whole human through this journey. Through pain, I find openings to embrace love.

Turning to Inner Work

By the end of 2019, I felt intense anxiety on most days. I worked in a corporate tech company and struggled to get going in the mornings. I felt this constant need to do everything faster, to impress with each project report, and to be on target with my ambitious 5-year career plan.

By March 2020, I began exploring “shadow work” and connected with a Jungian depth therapist to support my process. Our shadows include the things we’ve repressed over the years; it’s the parts of ourselves that didn’t seem “acceptable” in our environments — often a well of traumas.

Discovering emotional neglect and abuse is a tough pill to swallow. Up until that point, I knew I didn’t feel satisfied in my family relationships, but I had no idea just how much I’d been the one doing way more work.

One thing I’ve learned from my thousands of hours of inner work and psychology reading: our parents or caretakers strongly impact our adult behaviors and experiences.

Accepting the reality of my parents’ damaging impact has opened doors. I stopped blaming myself so much for all the unhelpful coping mechanisms I had developed. I get to choose differently now.

Understanding Emotionally Immature Parents

If you think your parents might be emotionally immature, you can explore a checklist from Gibson’s book. Here are a few that stood out to me:

My parent tended to be a black-and-white thinker and unreceptive to new ideas.

When I was growing up, my parent used me as a confidant but wasn’t a confidant for me.

My parent was inconsistent — sometimes wise, sometimes unreasonable.

When it came to emotional closeness and feelings, my parent seemed uncomfortable and didn’t go there.

Using this quiz is less about “diagnosing” your parent and more about understanding their ability to relate to you.

When I identified several unhelpful behaviors and experiences with my parents, I experienced heavy, thick layers of anger. I’ve put the book down many times because these realizations felt too real and searing. When a parent doesn’t support you emotionally, you feel less valuable.

Things like low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and ongoing self-doubt are common symptoms for the adult child of immature parents.

Here are a few more factors that resonated with me:

• When you share your emotions with your parents, you often feel you’re “wrong” somehow.
• You don’t feel like you ever receive a genuine apology when your parents make mistakes.
• Though your parents might praise your efforts, you don’t feel like they ever took the time to get to know you.
• More often than not, your parents bring the conversation back to focus on themselves, their feelings, and their needs.

My last in-person visit with my parents happened two years ago. It was the last night of a two-week trip, and we’d planned a game night.

I wanted to feel special. Three years earlier, I moved to San Francisco on my own, started a new career in UX, and overcame many struggles to get a great job. I had hoped my parents would finally be proud of me.

Earlier in the trip, I’d made repeated efforts to strengthen my relationship with each parent. I shared concerns and suggested we work to rebuild trust.

But as we sat around the kitchen table playing cards, the conversation was never about me. When I shared things about my life, they’d respond with their experience and continue talking about themselves.

Am I being selfish? Are my parents just really unaware? What’s happening?

I had a complete emotional breakdown that night, sobbing as I realized I couldn’t share anything meaningful with my parents. I had already started working with a depth therapist, and the reality of the disconnect between me and my mom and dad became clear. I felt deeply alone.

Taking Space to Mourn

When I first discovered emotional neglect and gaping inner wounds, I treated the healing process like a test to ace.

Working with my therapist, I read all the books, took studious notes, embraced many recommendations, and did the “extra credit.” But healing emotional pain is not a linear journey. I understood the intellectual reality pretty quickly, but my body really does “keep score.”

Embracing more somatic healing took a while. Here are a few of the practical steps I took:

• Engage in guided meditations for emotional trauma
• Explore somatic processing, talking to different parts of my body
• Practice trauma-informed yoga, mostly in my home with an online teacher I trust
• Own the anger by writing down all the specifics of what I’m angry about, then find ways to channel that energy, i.e., exercise, housework, or direct action to change a situation.
• Cry a lot and journal and pray and create things to express my emotions

As Amanda Palmer said — If you don’t deal with your demons, they go into the cellar of your soul and lift weights.

Rather than seeing my body’s pain and struggles as an obstacle, I’ve been finding ways to support my body. It feels like a beautiful collaboration rather than a hostile situation.

Nurturing Emotional Maturity

When I started reading the book, maybe a year ago, I skipped to the chapter on emotional maturity, copied down the list of attributes, and assumed I would follow the recipe to become a “better” person.

But in reality, we don’t develop our armor of unhelpful coping mechanisms overnight; we build walls to protect overselves over decades. Gibson recommends starting with one or two new approaches at a time and being very gentle with that process.

Here are a few of the many emotional maturity attributes from the book that resonated with me:

I won’t give more energy than I really have.

Instead of trying to please, I’ll give other people a true indication of how I feel.

When I make a mistake, I’ll chalk it up to being human.

I’ll remember that everyone is responsible for their own feelings and expressing their needs clearly.

I won’t volunteer for something if I think I’ll resent it later.

I’ll see myself as a strong person who deserves to give and receive help from friends.

I will communicate clearly and actively seek the outcomes I want. I won’t expect others to know what I need unless I tell them.

When I first read through the emotional maturity list, I felt more anger and sparks of excitement. Like a spiritual X-ray machine, I saw all the spots where I felt damage, self-doubt, and intense struggle.

Like being willing to ask for help. What a concept.

I grew up believing I should be as self-sufficient as possible. Asking for support was a sign of weakness — end of story. Plus, when I did ask for help within my family, I noticed irritation or even angered responses. My child self got the message: my needs and feelings are inconvenient to other people.

Moving forward, it feels like taking a regular leap of faith to believe most people do want to help if they can. Thankfully, I’ve attracted some kind people into my life, and my “trust falls” have been going well. I’ve cried several times at how beautiful their responses have been.

Asking for help feels vulnerable; it’s a risk and emotional exposure. We can’t control the outcome. But as I learned from researcher Brene Brown and her wildly-popular TED talk, vulnerability opens us to love and connection.

Now I practice observing others more objectively. Do they show signs of emotional maturity?

Using detached observation with interactions has been a powerful tool. I observe the situation and notice body language, facial expressions, my inner responses, etc. Then, I respond with greater awareness. I don’t have to “fix” anyone; I accept what is.

Opening to devastating realities, allowed me to expand my perspective and opened the door for new possibilities. I’ve been connecting more deeply with emotionally mature and safe people. Our interactions have felt so healing, beautiful, and powerfully affirmative.

As I stop morphing myself to be who my parents — and culture — want me to be, I reclaim my energy and fiery passion.

It’s a real “Fuck, yeah!”

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